Year: 2012

It’s no secret to my contemporaries, I am a horror snob. For the most part, I keep my recent viewing list to a select list of strong films that challenge me mentally and emotionally. It’s quite a shame really since some of the more delightful delicacies of the horror genre are so deliciously low. You shouldn’t always have to eat filet mignon constantly – every now and again you need a nice big juicy burger with a big kosher pickle and French fried potatoes.

Stepping up to the platform today is one of the nicest people I’ve never met: writer, director, cinematographer – you name it. She’s an award winning filmmaker and the newly minted Director of Operations for the Viscera Organization: Lori Bowen.

A fine Halloween tradition returns as once again I pick the brains of horror fans, media and assorted genre professionals as I ask that immortal question: what do horror fans want? Kicking things off, we welcome the Horror Man, Sam Santiago, the Editor in Chief of Truly Disturbing.com.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that “Sinister” is the best horror movie I’ve seen this year. Or how it broke new ground in the genre. Quite honestly, it may or may not be and it really didn’t do anything new. But, if I were to describe it in a few words, it would be simple, scary, effective and honest.

Somewhere out in the universe, in a vast Jungian conceptual tangle is a library. In this particular library – since it is an imaginary construct – there are only two books. One thin volume is a collection of foundational stories: these stories are the basis of ever told. The other is a massive tome that, in a less fanciful environment, would fill all the world’s libraries.

This is the thesaurus.

It contains countless variation of the core stories. A rare few of these variants are something special – evolutionary leaps in the material that make it better than the original. Most, however, are pale shades of its progenitor. Neither better nor worse, they could, at best be called, “unnecessary.”

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who stopped talking midway through a sentence? Not the comfortable shorthand that comes with a long term friendship but the half-mad ramblings of a drunken stranger at a party – you know the type. He’s the guy that hems you into a corner with no one in eyeshot of rescuing you. But wait, there’s more. Occasionally, your incoherent companion has a moment of clarity and in place of his mad ramblings, you now have abject tedium.

Rachel (Anessa Ramsey) has no choice but to hang around for the “Rites of Spring”.

A good solid rule for most movies is, “Make sense.” Even the most avant of garde films makes sense in their own kind of way. If a film doesn’t have a claim to that particular edgy conceit, then one would think it would be that much easier to follow that simple directive.

However, it’s something that “Rites of Spring” fails within its first ten seconds.
I never recovers.